Sir Tom McKillop, Sir Stephen Robson and Sir Peter Sutherland were all on the RBS board as it hurtled towards disaster under Fred Goodwin’s leadership

Pressure was growing last night for three more ex-RBS directors to be shamed and stripped of their knighthoods.

The pleas came just 24 hours after the bank’s former chief executive, Fred Goodwin, had his honour shredded.

Sir Tom McKillop, Sir Stephen Robson and Sir Peter Sutherland were all on the RBS board as it hurtled towards disaster under Goodwin’s leadership.

John Mann, a Labour MP who sits on the Treasury Select Committee, said: “The precedent has been set. It wasn’t Fred Goodwin on his own who caused the problems. He was part of a team of people.”

Eddy Weatherill, chairman of the Independent Banking Advisory Group, added: “These people were sleeping while Fred drove the car over the cliff.

“You can’t blame one man. It’s like a football or cricket team. He may have been the captain but there were plenty of other players picking up their cheques.”

Mr Weatherill is concerned the decisionto strip Mr Goodwin of his title would act as a smokescreen.

He said: “The danger is he becomes the scapegoat. There’s a bit of bloodletting to satisfy the mob and then everyone can get back on the gravy train.”

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The Financial Services Authority report on the collapse of RBS, published in December, was highly critical of Mr Goodwin’s management style.

While it stopped just short of labellinghim a bully, it found him “cold, analytical and unsympathetic”.

And it criticised the rest of the board for failing to challenge him, resulting in “strategic mistakes being made”.

Sir Tom McKillop was chairman of RBS from 2006 until 2009. He failed to prevent the catastrophic takeover of Dutch bank ABN Amro, which brought RBS to its knees. The 68-year-old was also a director of Lloyds Banking Group between 1999 and 2004.

He was knighted in 2002, for services to the pharmaceuticals industry during his time at drugs company Zeneca.

Sir Stephen Robson, an RBS board member between 2001 and 2009, also sat on his hands during the Goodwin goldrush.

He was a senior civil servant until 2001, playing a key role in the privatisation of the railways. He was also instrumental in developing the public private finance initiatives which have landed taxpayers with mammoth bills for building and running hospitals.

He is on the board of the Financial Reporting Council, which advises on the way firms should be run and best practice for reporting firms’ financial affairs.

He is also a part-time director of Xstrata and chairman of the Public Interest Committee at accountants KPMG.

Interestingly, his career details on the organisation’s website make no reference to his time at RBS.

The third culprit is City grandee Sir Peter Sutherland, who sat on the RBS board for eight years until 2009 bail-out.

A former Attorney General of Ireland, he was awarded an honorary knighthood in 2004. He served as chairman of BP until retiring in 2009 but remains chairman of Goldman Sachs International, part of the US investment bank.

He was also made a director of the London School of Economics despite an online petition opposing his appointment.